Subjunctives – ‘I Would Love To If I Can’ vs. ‘I Would Love To If I Could’

Either are correct.

Would have been great

sounds better in the context because it was merely circumstance that caused them to not play together.

Could have been great

sounds to me like there was something that caused them to not play together, such as a ban or similar.

"1)If It's no big deal we'd sure love it if you'd try to get here at least before lunch."

In (1), the speaker is referring to a (nearly) present action "we'd sure love it" of a future action "you'd try." In this case, the speaker will be loving the (real or imagined) trying before the listener succeeds or fails to arrive before lunch.

2)If It's no big deal we'd sure love it if you tried to get here at least before lunch.

In (2), the speaker is referring to a future action "we'd sure love it" of a past action "you tried". In this case, the speaker will be loving only if the listener had in (real or imagined) fact tried, whether successfully or not.

You need to exclude the "if". It just confuses the analysis.

The problem here isn't correctness of grammar. The problem is tactfulness. I think this is what Lawrence is reading into it. I disagree with his use of "exasperation," but I think our disagreement is key. You can't put inflection in writing. But you "hear" inflection when you read. Lawrence hears exasperation and I don't. If you're going to write, you need to think about how it will "sound" to the reader, rather than whether it is correct grammatically. This is not always the case, but it is the case with this particular choice of sentences.

Most of the contents of these sentences are verbiage. "If it's not a big deal" is plainly insulting. "we'd sure love it" is I don't know exactly what, but also offensive. "if you'd try" or "if you tried" are just weak. A reasonable way to say this is, "Please try to get here before lunch." I say this because I suspect many if not most of the problems with forming sentences isn't the grammatical correctness of one form over another, it's whether either form, even the grammatically correct one, should be used.